إرفنج ضد ليبستدات

Judgement

The case for the Defendants

8.6 Evans considered that Irving's view of the Holocaust underwent a sea-change at or about the time he read and was converted by the Leuchter report on Auschitz. Evans noted (and Irving accepted) that in the 1991 edition of Hitler's War most of the references to the extermination of the Jews, which had found a place in the 1977 edition, had been excised. In the 1991 edition the liquidation programme is referred to as "a notion".

8.7 The Defendants' case is that Irving is one of a small group of writers who can properly be described as Holocaust deniers. The group includes Paul Rassinier; Arthur Butz; Thies Christophersen; Wilhelm Staglich; Ernst Zundel and Robert Faurisson. (I shall have to return to a number of these individuals when I deal in Section X below with the allegation that associates with right-wing extremists).

8.8 The way in which the Defendants seek to make good Lipstadt's allegation that Irving is a Holocaust denier (and a dangerous one at that) and that he fits well into the galere to which I have referred in paragraph 8.7 above, is by citing what Irving has said and written on the subject, principally from 1988 onwards. The Defendants contend that Irving stands condemned at a denier out of his own mouth. It is their case that on numerous occasions Irving has made statements which fall within each of Evans's categories which are listed at paragraph 8.4 above.

8.9 Amongst the assertions made by Irving which mark him out as a Holocaust denier, Evans noted in particular the following: his claim that the number who "died" in Auschwitz, "most of them from epidemics", was 100,000; his claim made expressly or by implication that the Jews had brought the Holocaust upon themselves; his assertion that that the conduct of the Nazis in exterminating Jews could be excused by the fact that they or their families had suffered in the Allied bombing raids; the manner in which he dismissed the totality of the evidence of eye-witnesses from Auschwitz as unreliable because it is the product of mass hysteria; his claim, often repeated as will be seen, that the gas chambers at Auschwitz are a lie invented by British intelligence; his denunciation the diary of Ann Frank as a forgery or as a novel like Gone With the Wind; his claim that the myth of the Holocaust is the product of a well-financed campaign by Jewry to legitimise the substantial payments made by Germany to the state of Israel since the war. This claim has been made by Irving on several occasions including the launch of the English edition of the Leuchter report. The Defendants contend that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier and that his denial flies in the face of the totality of the evidence.